The Island of Misfit Boys

30% of the brightest 1% of kids at our school are trans.

Our county is risking our brightest minds to this bullshit belief system, and no one is talking about this. Are we really okay with this?

Recently, my fancy private school posted a news release boasting about the students who had been recognized as National Merit Semifinalists. These are the kids who tested in the top 1% of Juniors who took the PSAT, around 16,000 of 1.5 million or so. These are bright kids. Like really bright kids. Wikipedia helpfully notes that previous Semifinalists include Jeff Bezos, Paul Krugman, Bill Gates, Elena Kagan. You get the picture: smart.

Though our school should be justifiably proud of these students, they played a little game to disguise something: around 30% of the students are trans-identified. To disguise this, the students’ names were listed separately and apart from the photo. Only an extremely attentive reader would note the names, count up those that sounded feminine, and discover a mismatch. And really – who’s going to do that?

I’m not sure this was a conspiracy. Perhaps this was the diplomatic instincts of a staffer who wished to downplay what is sure to be an awkward piece of historical documentation of adolescence for some of these kids. In fact, at least one of these kids has already desisted, and I suspect three of the others are, too. [I’m extremely grateful that high school photos of me slouching against a wall are not haunting the web – no matter what my fashion or pronouns.]

But this whole press release story has disguised a bigger issue: 30% of the brightest 1% of kids at our school are trans. This is a big deal. Our county is risking and often losing our brightest minds to this bullshit belief system, and no one is talking about this. Are we really okay with this?

There is a clear correlation between autism and gender dysphoria. The rates are so statistically disproportionate that no one debates it. Within my private group of parents of RODG boys, we quickly recognized that our boys are unusually bright. Our informal study confirmed this. Yet the connection between being profoundly gifted and having gender dysphoria has not been formally studied, although some clinicians are acknowledging it.

I find this lack of curiosity shocking and deeply problematic. We can see these bright minds getting sucked away (I’m looking at you Jazz Jennings, and yes, you, too, Chelsea/Bradley Manning, and definitely Vivian Jenna Wilson/Xavier Musk – with parents like yours, I can tell you are brilliant – tough luck), but no one cares.

Parents of ROGD girls are showered with sympathetic understanding on the challenges of growing up female in a misogynistic world, or the correlation between sexual abuse and gender dysphoria. Parents of ROGD boys are warned their sons are either gay or perverts. Nice. And yes, we parents see that – we do. Many of our boys are gay (fine. cool. whatever). Some of them are developing AGP. (that's extremely difficult to face.) But some of them do not fit those molds. There is something else going on here.

This third category of boys (and girls) are the socially awkward, slightly autistic, and profoundly gifted kids. The ones who were reading at age two. The ones who memorized all the dinosaur names, but couldn’t remember who sat next to them on the field trip. The ones who took advanced math but never got birthday invitations. The ones on the edge of the social circle but too awkward to form their own band of misfits. Until the GSA Club formed.

These kids lack skills and confidence, but they desperately want affection and connection. Statistically, finding peers is a difficult thing to do when your brain is wired like this. If you are like my son, with an IQ of 150, there are only five or six other kids like you in 10,000 people. That means that you're not likely to find an intellectual peer until grad school. Imagine that: 22 years of social isolation. If you had a couple decades of being alone, you might start to think you were born in the wrong body too.

But actually, you were just born in the wrong society. Like Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”, our society is deeply distrustful of those who are smarter. Remember: equity is key. In order to be equal, we handicap our brightest brains – this time not with sound-erupting earphones, but with “gender affirming” puberty blockers that literally stunt a child’s brain. The limited studies show that these cross-sex medical treatments decrease a child’s IQ. Of course they do. But perhaps that is not a glitch: it’s a feature. If you had a couple decades of being alone on a deserted island by yourself, you might start to think you were born in the wrong body too.

Ironically, you know who is not transing away the gifted? Russia. You can bet your state-sponsored vodka that our global rivals aren’t sacrificing their greatest brains to this BS.

Dear NSF, Dear Raytheon, Dear Department of Defense, pay attention: get this gender affirming “care” away from our kids – all of our kids. It’s not science; it’s ideology, and it’s damaging our country’s brightest brains.